Google 2025 Sustainability Report and Cloud Initiatives

The sources outline Google’s extensive commitment to sustainability by detailing both internal operational achievements and the global impact of its technology.

The company's 2025 Environmental Report documents substantial operational progress in 2024, including a 12% reduction in data center energy emissions and achieving 64% replenishment of freshwater consumption across its operations.

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The energy strategy focuses on procuring significant volumes of clean power, with contracts signed for over 8 GW of new generation, complemented by investments in next-generation sources, such as advanced nuclear and enhanced geothermal projects.

26 million metric tons of GHG equivalent emissions

Crucially, the firm’s products extend this impact externally, enabling individuals and partners to collectively cut 26 million metric tons of GHG equivalent emissions through tools such as fuel-efficient routing and the Solar API.

Concurrently, Google Cloud offers solutions that leverage data and AI, helping its business clients measure performance, optimize resource consumption, and strategically unlock sustainable growth across various industries.

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Google Cloud services empower businesses to address their carbon footprint by facilitating improved measurement, efficiency optimization, and reduction of digital emissions, often leveraging AI and data analytics.

Here is a breakdown of how Google Cloud services support businesses in monitoring, optimizing, and reducing their carbon footprint:

Monitoring and Measuring Carbon Footprint

Google Cloud helps organizations improve measurement and monitor progress toward sustainability targets using data and AI:

• AI-Powered Insights: Organizations can leverage AI-powered insights to monitor their progress towards sustainability targets and build business resilience.

• Carbon Footprint Dashboards: Businesses can use the Carbon Footprint Dashboard to view and export reports on their Google Cloud carbon emissions.

Tools specifically provided within the Carbon Sense suite include Google Cloud Carbon Footprint and Google Workspace Carbon Footprint.

• Sustainability Targets and Reporting: Data and AI are applied to areas such as ESG performance management, regulatory compliance, and supply chain transparency.

• Geospatial Analysis: With Earth Engine and Google Cloud, organizations can utilize planetary observation data alongside large-scale computing to help measure and analyze environmental change, enabling leaders to make informed decisions.

Optimizing Operations and Efficiency

Google Cloud assists organizations in optimizing energy and resource usage, leading to greater efficiency across their operations and supply chains:

• AI for Resource Usage: Businesses can work more efficiently by applying AI to streamline energy and resource usage.

• Operational Optimization Areas: Customers are optimizing for various targets, including building energy management, supply chain optimization, improved inventory management, demand forecasting, manufacturing, raw material traceability, and fleet electrification and route optimization.

• Cloud Resource Optimization: The Carbon Sense suite includes Active Assist recommendations, which are also listed among management tools, to help manage and optimize cloud resources.

• Efficient Infrastructure: The foundational infrastructure is highly efficient; for example, Google's custom AI chips, known as Ironwood TPUs, are nearly 30 times more power efficient than the first Cloud TPU generation from 2018.

Reducing Carbon Footprint

Google Cloud provides specific tools and services aimed at directly reducing the emissions associated with cloud-based applications and offering sustainability-focused products:

• Carbon Sense Suite: Businesses can reduce the carbon footprint of their cloud-based applications by using the Carbon Sense suite of tools.

• Low-Carbon Region Selection: Key tools in this suite include the Google Cloud Region Picker and low-carbon regional signals, which allow organizations to select regions with lower environmental impacts for their workloads.

• Enabled Reductions through Products: Google’s broader products, which sometimes integrate with cloud capabilities, enable significant external emissions reductions. For instance, the Solar API uses AI and satellite imagery to analyze factors like roof space, weather, and tree shade to estimate solar savings for millions of buildings, thereby unlocking potential renewable energy adoption.

• Partner Solutions: Organizations can also work with Google Cloud Ready Sustainability Partners who offer trusted, business-ready solutions to address their sustainability challenges.

Ultimately, Google Cloud offers a path to unlocking sustainable growth by enabling businesses to leverage data and AI for a more sustainable impact